


What's In A Name?

by incrediblycreativeusername



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Angst, Family, Friendship, Gen, Multi, Timey-Wimey, Utopia, Year That Never Was
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-06-12
Updated: 2015-06-12
Packaged: 2018-04-04 03:30:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,857
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4124100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/incrediblycreativeusername/pseuds/incrediblycreativeusername
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jack is waiting for the Doctor yet is found by a time lady instead. A lost time lady who is not completely certain why she is on Earth to begin with, only that she is following a letter that signifies both hope and the fact that time is running out.</p>
<p>Well, she had never been good at running away.  </p>
<p>Alternate Year That Never Was. Or: when the Master fled Gallifrey during the Time War, he took his little sister with him.</p>
            </blockquote>





	What's In A Name?

**Author's Note:**

> Hi. Still trying to figure out how to work this site. Feedback is nice so tell me what you think and whether this is worth continuing. :)  
> Disclaimer: I own nothing.

Lucy Cole giggled, resisting the urge to pluck one of the flowers out. The gardener had spent hours and hours planting the flowerbed, and it looked really colourful and beautiful. Surely if she just took one… One bud would not be missed, then she would be able to press it in one of the thick books her father kept but never looked at in the library. 

“Lucy, come inside!” her nanny yelled from the doorway. It was raining slightly, and the woman was slightly worried that the young girl would catch a cold. Lucy giggled again, standing up and running to another one of the flower beds. 

“Just five more minutes. Please,” Lucy said, knowing as she said the words that she was not going to get them. Already she had got the bottom of her dress muddy; she was going to be in a lot of trouble. In fact, she was meant to be inside and not running around like a little child. At eight, she was meant to have outgrown that. 

“No, now,” the nanny said. Lucy sighed, disappointed, turning around and dragging her feet. In the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of something sparkly sticking out of the earth. Naturally she became distracted quickly, turning back to look at it fully and kneeling down. 

It was bright pink and sparkly, not at all in a natural way. There were curved symbols written along the edge in a thick black colour. That was odd. It was not an ornament or it would have been displayed more clearly. It was not some random discarded piece of paper, or it would not have been almost in pristine condition despite the rain and the markings on it would not have been so deliberate. Perhaps it was even some sort of language, but all she knew was that it was not English or Latin (why exactly she had to learn the latter language was something that she did not know nor would question). 

Lucy grabbed the paper, digging it out with her fingers. It was an envelope, sealed with a deep red seal and more symbols. Some of the symbols were repeated, but not in any sort of pattern, only making her more certain that it was a language of some kind. She pulled it against her side, sheltering it from the rain using her body even though by some logic if it was going to be damaged by rain it would have been damaged by now. 

“You had to just go get yourself all muddy, didn’t you,” her nanny reprimanded her as she finally got to the door. Lucy looked down, realizing that the envelope had left streaks of mud against her side. Only the part of it that had actually been in the rain was clear and thus sparkled brightly. “What is that?” 

“I… um… I found it in the garden,” Lucy said. The nanny sighed. 

“Alright then. Let’s get you cleaned up,” she said, not caring much about what Lucy had brought in. Lucy could not help be glad for it. She had no idea what was inside the envelope, but for some reason she could not explain felt like it had been meant for her. 

 

Later that afternoon, Lucy snuck down into the kitchen. The biscuit tray, which was one of the things she usually snuck into the kitchen for, was left completely ignored in favour for some paper towels, which she had never before snuck into the kitchen for. She pulled off several sheets, hesitated, then pulled off several more before running back up to her room again. Quickly she wiped the mud off the rest of the envelope – it had dried so came off in clumps. The rest of the envelope was bright pink as well, even though some of the pinkness rubbed off with the mud. 

Perhaps she should ask her mother. It felt wrong just to open somebody else’s letter without their permission, but there was the fact that she had found it and finders keepers. If she told her mother, would she be allowed to keep it? 

Lucy turned the letter over. In small letters, the same size as the symbols but this time in English, two words were written. Open me. Not even considering that perhaps the words weren’t meant for her, and having the odd feeling that she had just fallen down the rabbit hole, she broke the seal. Inside there were two pieces of paper. 

The first one was completely blank, apart from two words. Read me. Lucy was confused. The piece of paper was blank. Perhaps it referred to the other piece of paper. Lucy opened it, and this time there was in fact writing but not a lot of it. Two words were written in a large script in black ink, one just below the other. The words had then been underlined in blue, with a blue arrow joining the two rows. 

L I A  
V A N T

Lucy thought barely anything of it. She ignored the row of what appeared to be numbers, which had been vigorously crossed out but again in blue, which failed to block out the black ink underneath completely. 

There was only one area of writing left, added as a clearly edited after-note obvious by the colour it was written in alone. 

'Look at things for what they are; not what they appear to be.  
Concentrate and keep trying. ;)'

Another arrow pointed off the edge of the paper. Lucy looked back at the blank page. The arrow was not pointing in anywhere near the right direction; it just indicated the presence of something else. After turning the envelope inside out, the blank piece of paper was the only option remaining. 

There was definitely nothing written on it except for ‘read me’. She turned it around one more time, quicker, and she almost saw something there. 'Dearest Lucy'. No, there was nothing. Except she could have sworn that it had said her name on it the moment before. 

 

“Mum, is this piece of paper blank?” Lucy asked in a small voice, covering the two words she actually saw with her finger because she already knew that part wasn’t blank. Mrs Cole looked utterly confused.  
“Yes,” she said. “It’s just a blank piece of paper. Why am I even looking at it?”  
I found it in the back garden in an envelope with strange symbols, and it says ‘read me’, Lucy thought, but saying that out loud would just sound stupid. She’d already asked about the language on the envelope, copying parts of it out onto another normal piece of paper she had in her bedroom. Nobody she knew could recognize it.  
“Never mind,” Lucy said. 

 

Lucy looked at both pieces of paper again. Concentrate. At this point she was definitely feeling like the beginning of Alice in Wonderland, where everything had labels on it that she could only follow and hope for the best. 

She was meant to concentrate and stare at the blank piece of paper that said ‘read me’. It felt like every time she stared at it for too long she wanted to look in another direction. It was completely blank. 

'Dearest Lucy.'

There it was again. Just a flash. She concentrated harder, a headache slowly forming at her focus. Surely there was an easier way of doing this. All she had to do was keep trying. Why did the odd piece of paper have her name on it? It couldn’t have. Perhaps she was just squinting so hard that she was imagining things. 

Whatever it was, it wasn’t working. It was impossible to read a blank piece of paper… Look at things for what they are; not what they appear to be. Perhaps if it wasn’t actually blank then she would be able to read it just fine. It isn’t blank, she thought, staring down at it. It isn’t blank. 

“It isn’t blank,” she said out loud, closing her eyes and opening again. The second time she did that, suddenly she was no longer staring at a blank piece of paper. The words were wavering but they were clearly there. Lucy felt her mouth drop open. This was impossible. 

'Dearest Lucy

Congratulations are in order. If you can read this, you win. Not for some time yet, I’m afraid, but you do. I am going to take you to see the stars. There are so many planets out there, so much life, humans are barely anything – just a corner of a corner – and I’m going to take you to see them all. All of time and space, all you have to do is ask. Hopefully you can recall that whenever thing seems bleakest, for this is not a message you will be able to recall consciously – in fact, you are going to burn it when you have finished reading.

Eventually this is going to feel like a dream that you cannot place. On this paper there is a perception filter, which is why it appears blank. But you can look through it, even now. You are Lucy Cole. I could not have chosen a better name for you myself.

Knuckle under until the time is right: it’s going to be one hell of a ride.

Your future friend and sister

The Shadow'

 

Some things happened after that point, as they did. 

The moment she stopped reading, Lucy Cole burned the piece of paper in the sink, not sure why she was even bothering to burn a blank piece of paper at all. She did the same with the other piece of paper and the envelope, her mind jumping to odd conclusions for the actual reason. Instead of going straight to bed, she sat by her window and looked out. It was not yet dark enough to see the stars, but she looked for them anyway. 

No, stars were too hot to stand on. Perhaps the moon… people had already gone there. Or Mars… or… she could not even recall the names of the other planets but suddenly she wanted to know them all. 

Was it Martian? The symbols on the paper, some of which she had still copied over and lay on her pillow? There was life, or something, out there. She became convinced of it.

So Lucy Cole scoured the library. Even after it became apparent that she was not intelligent enough to become an astronaut – who tried to burn a blank piece of paper in a sink when there were fireplaces available? – she learned about as many different planets as she could. There was something magical about the stars, and she dreamed about going into space even when she had grown up enough to realize that there likely wasn’t anything coming to whisk her away.

And it could be said that when (just under twenty years after that barely-remembered first night) a man dropped out of the sky and stumbled from a blue box in ill-fitting clothes, she was more excited than anxious. 

Yeah, that last one was a mistake. 

But it was the start of one hell of a ride.


End file.
